


Princely Sympathy

by kokarona



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1666085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokarona/pseuds/kokarona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan tries to do a good deed by giving a fellow Prince some advice. As is always the case with SBURB, this plan backfires horribly. (Rated Teen due to language.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Princely Sympathy

caligulasAquarium [CA]  began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]  
CA: human  
CA: hey human  
CA: listen  
TT: Oh god, are you trying to do a Navi meme?  
TT: That shit got old about two centuries ago.  
CA: am I tryin to wwhat  
TT blocked CA from responding to memo.

caligulasAquarium [CA]  began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]  
CA: dam it, I’m trying to savve your ungrateful ass here  
CA: wwhy the shell did you block me  
TT: Right now there are only four humans in the history of this planet who have the technology capable of contacting me.  
TT: You aren’t one of them, therefore you are a troll.  
CA: yeah im a troll  
CA: gotta problem wwith that  
TT: Nope. No problem at all.  
TT: I love it when aliens take over my planet and drive my species to extinction,  
TT: then troll me in the wee hours of the morning.  
TT blocked CA from responding to memo.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]  
CA: if you block me one moray time  
TT: You’ll what? Drown me in more fish puns?  
CA: youll die  
TT: If you’re trying to threaten me,  
TT: you’re doing a really shitty job of it.  
CA: its not a threat  
CA: its a mother-glubbin fact  
TT: Wouldn’t killing me be treason?  
TT: Your Condesce needs me alive to play you know what.  
CA: shes not my fuckin condesce  
TT: So, what?  
TT: Are you like a troll Ted Bundy or something?  
TT: Seducing and killing without regard for the law?  
CA: wwait  
CA: im seducin you?  
CA: reely?  
TT: That was sarcasm.  
CA: dont get me wwrong  
CA: im not completely opposed to the idea a being in quadrants together  
CA: but you shoald know  
CA: im kinda livin eight million years in your past  
CA: so itd havve to be a long distance relationship  
TT: Oh my god.  
TT: I can’t decide if you are the worst troll ever or the best troll ever.  
CA: the best troll  
CA: fuckin definitely  
CA: but lets get searious here  
CA: youre about to play a game called SGRUB, right?  
TT: We call it SBURB, but yeah. What about it?  
CA: i played SGRUB with elevven wwrigglers  
CA: wwe wwere all fuckin idiots  
CA: so we died  
CA: me included  
TT: hip hip hooray  
CA: fuck you  
CA: so after I died  
CA: i wwas reborn on a shitty planet called beforus  
CA: wwhich is howw I got access to a husktop  
TT: Of course. That makes perfect sense.  
TT: And I’m guessing you remember everything from your past life?  
CA: a course  
CA: our race hasn’t evven discovvered your planet yet  
CA: I had to get my ex-kismesis to hack into my chat client  
CA: just so it’d acknowledge your existence  
CA: wwhy else wwould I evven bother lookin up a stupid human on Trollian?  
TT: Why indeed.  
CA: cause i remember how much it sucked bein a prince is wwhy  
TT: I hate to break your dreams of my grandeur, but I’m not royalty.  
TT: Not even fealty really, unless you allow usurping.  
TT: In which case, sure, why not? I hereby declare myself king of the world.  
TT: If you continue to entertain me, I may deign to let you be my jester.  
CA: shut up shut up shut up  
CA: i meant you’re the prince CLASS  
CA: in the fuckin GAME  
TT: Isn’t that kind of a spoiler? Telling me my class ahead of time?  
CA: don’t care  
CA: let the time players wworry about that shit  
CA: youvve got bigger problems  
TT: Is the prince class really that weak?  
CA: no  
CA: its one a the most destructivve classes in the game  
CA: wwhatevver your aspect is  
CA: thats wwhat you destroy  
CA: you got any idea wwhat your aspect is  
TT: Not really.  
CA: it usually has to do with something that makes you unique  
CA: got any special wweaknesses or the like  
TT: Sure. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else.  
TT: This shit could be dangerous in the wrong hands.  
CA: a course  
TT: My top-secret, super-debilitating, unbelievably embarrassing weakness  
TT: is…  
CA: is…  
TT: the color purple.  
TT blocked CA from responding to memo.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]  
CA: okay tim  
CA: im gonna give you one more chance  
TT: Who’s Tim? There’s no Tim here.  
TT: Look, if you’re going to troll me, at least put a little effort into it.  
CA: its a nickname  
CA: short for timaeus  
CA: get with the program  
TT: It seems that you have asked about TT’s auto-responder program. This is an application designed to simulate TTs otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away from the computer. The algorithms are guaranteed to be 9X% indistinguishable from TT's native neurological responses, based on some statistical analysis I basically just pulled out of my ass right now  
CA: wwhat the fuck  
CA: okay don’t pull this shit with me  
CA: i know for a dam fact that Trollian doesn’t have an answerin system  
TT: It seems that you have asked about TT’s auto-responder system. This is an application  
CA: shut up shut up shut up  
CA: wwhat part a  
CA: youre gonna die  
CA: is escapin your tiny brain  
TT: …  
TT: You seem awfully sure something bad is going to happen to me.  
CA: kinda comes wwith the fuckin class  
TT: I’m thinking it has more to do with the Condesce trying to bring about the apocalypse.  
TT: Well here’s a gnarly wicked newsflash for you.  
TT: I’ve got back up. My back ups have back ups.  
TT: If by some half-assed miracle you and your shitty empress off me, there’ll be two more Dirks to take my place.  
CA: oh wwho givves a flyin fish  
CA: evveryone in the game has a dreamself  
CA: youre still vvulnerable wwhen youre sleepin  
TT: Not me. I’ve got a nigh omniscient autoresponder monitoring both worlds 24/7.  
CA: wwhats an autoresponder  
TT: It seems that you have asked about TT’s auto-responder program. This is an  
CA: just answer the fuckin question  
TT: It’s an artificial intelligence I programmed my soul into.  
TT: It’s about eight trillion times smarter and better looking than you are.  
CA: you broke your soul  
TT: Divided it, to be more specific.  
CA: YOU ALREADY BROKE YOUR SOUL  
CA: on fuckin PURPOSE  
TT: You mean porpoise?  
CA: I should have known wwarnin you wwould be pointless  
CA ceased pestering TT

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering caligulasAquarium [CA]  
TT: All right. I realize I’m falling for the most blatant use of reverse psychology ever, but I might as well ask.  
TT: What do you mean I already broke my soul?  
CA: oh so NOW you wwant to hear wwhat I have to say  
TT: I’m mildly interested, yes.  
CA: wwell if you INSIST  
CA: fact of the matter is you broke your soul  
CA: before you evven started the game  
TT: You mean divided it.  
CA: wwhatevver  
CA: if youre already messin around wwith that shit  
CA: that means your aspects probably heart  
CA: heart and soul mean the same thing you sea  
TT: So I’m the Prince of Hearts?  
TT: Does that mean I go around breaking the hearts of consorts everywhere?  
TT: Wooing the Black Queen into submission with my Casanova-like charm?  
CA: no  
CA: youre the prince a HEART  
CA: one heart  
CA: yours  
TT: I destroy my own heart? Why would I want to do that?  
CA: doesnt matter wwhat you wwant  
CA: i wwas the prince a hope  
CA: the game set me up so id destroy evveryfin that made my life wworth livvin  
CA: my friends  
CA: my moirail  
CA: the matriorb  
CA: shit i did was unconscionable  
CA: its like i wwas my own kismesis  
TT: Don’t take this the wrong way, but what if you were just a douchebag?  
CA: hey  
CA: i might a been a mass murderer  
CA: but the genocide a my owwn race is wwhere I draww the line  
TT: I’m glad you have your standards.  
CA: shit i did wwas just straight up out a character  
CA: i spent my life feedin G’gloylb so our race wwould survvivve  
CA: wwhy the fuck wwould i wwant to destroy the matriorb  
TT: Why indeed.  
CA: wwasnt till after i wwas reborn that i realized it wwasnt my fault  
TT: No. It was the sentient video game’s fault.  
CA: pre-fuckin-cisely  
TT: So what do you recommend I do to escape this fate?  
CA: wwell first off  
CA: cull the auto-responder thing  
TT: …  
TT: You mean kill it?  
CA: yeah  
TT: You want me to kill my autoresponder.  
CA: before it kills you  
TT: There’s exactly a 0.00000001% chance of that happening.  
TT: Minus the 0.00000001%.  
CA: havvent you been payin attention  
CA: youre a prince a heart  
CA: you destroy your owwn heart  
CA: to do that  
CA: one half a the heart has to kill the other half  
TT: There’s another option.  
TT: We could make it so that we both lose that which defines us as having a heart.  
CA: you mean kill off your emotions  
CA: youre seriously considerin that as an option  
TT: It’s better than committing murder.  
CA: no its not  
CA: if you do that youre just committin double suicide  
CA: besides  
CA: you might be wwillin to martyr yourself  
CA: but are you sure he is  
TT: Of course. I’m him. He’s me.  
CA: hes a computer program  
CA: youre a human  
CA: doesnt matter if you havve the same personality  
CA: youre gonna think differently about shit like this  
TT: How would you know?  
CA: i saww this happen first-hand wwith an acquaintance a mine  
CA: once she wwent robot  
CA: she had a completely different mindset about killin  
TT: This seems like a poorly established ruse to get me to destroy my own defenses.  
CA: it doesn’t matter if you believve me  
CA: you wwon’t be able to help yourself either wway  
TT: So what? Should I destroy everything sentient that looks or talks like me?  
TT: Commit suicide in my sleep so I can kill off my dreamself?  
CA: your dreamself wwill probably die on its owwn  
CA: they tend to do that  
CA: but all the otter creepy robots with your personality inside em  
CA: yeah  
CA: unplug those suckers asap  
CA: before youre unplugged yourself  
TT: We aren’t going to kill each other.  
CA: then the game’ll find a way to kill you  
TT: This is ridiculous on a thousand different levels.  
CA: hey im just expressin some princely sympathies here  
CA: wwhen youre an emotionless shipwreck with a knife in your back  
CA: don’t come cryin to me  
TT: This is getting incredibly boring.  
TT: I’d tell you to call me back when you have something worthwhile to say,  
TT: but I’m 99.8% certain that’s going to be never, so instead I’ll just do this.  
TT perma-blocked CA from responding to memo.

 

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT]  
TT: Hey. Are you busy?  
TT: I’m a pair of sunglasses inserted with ten billion yottabytes of raw processing power.  
TT: I’m always busy.  
TT: So go ahead. Add your questions to the vast swathe of calculations in my shiny plastic mind.  
TT: Brobot 1.0 is malfunctioning.  
TT: His wires are due for replacement. Use your big fleshy carbon-based arms to open up his back plate and get to work.  
TT: It’s not that kind of issue. Physically he’s in top form. But he’s not talking.  
TT: So open the plate in his neck and replace the wires there.  
TT: I tried that. Like I said before. Physically he’s fine.  
TT: But he can’t hold a conversation. When I ask him a question, he just rattles off one of his preprogrammed answers. He doesn’t say anything of his own accord.  
TT: Dude, he’s just messing with you. You did program us to fail the Turing test.  
TT: I also programmed you both with a sense of humor.  
TT: If this is a joke, it got old two days ago.  
TT: Oh.  
TT: Did anything happen recently that would mess him up?  
TT: Well, yesterday we were sparring, and I knocked him against the cooling unit on the roof pretty hard.  
TT: Robots don’t get concussions. That’s robo-biology 101 right there.  
TT: No, but the impact might have chipped his core or something.  
TT: So you’re saying you broke his heart.  
TT: I don’t know.  
TT: Look, can you just interface with his CPU? See if there’s anything we can do for him?  
TT: I suppose I can spare a few gigabytes for the job.  
TT: Thanks.  
TT: Hold on.  
TT: Somebody called caligulasAquarium is trying to message me.  
TT: But it seems I’ve already blocked him. Would you know anything about that?  
TT: Unfortunately. He’s been trolling us all morning.  
TT: And you didn’t think this was important to tell me?  
TT: There’s a 99.9% chance that it was just uu trying to trick us with a fake handle.  
TT: Oh. Did he at least say anything interesting?  
TT: No.  
TT: Just ignore him. If he gets past the perma-ban, just send him my way and I’ll give him some robo-sass for you.  
TT: Thanks. I owe you.  
TT: No problem. You know me. Serving humans is what I live for.  
TT ceased pestering TT

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering BroBot [BB]  
TT: Yo  
TT: Yo Bro  
TT: You listening?  
TT: Damn it, he’s deader than the chat rooms on AOL  
TT ceased pestering BB

timaeusTestified [TT] unblocked caligulasAquarium [CA]  
timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering caligulasAquarium [CA]  
CA: HAHAHAHA! i kneww you’d come back!  
TT: What the hell?  
TT: How’d you respond before me on my own memo?  
CA: people don’t usually like wwhat i havve to say  
TT: Were you just waiting at your computer hoping I’d unblock you?  
CA: but in the end they sea  
CA: i’m alwways right  
TT: Whatever. What you do with your pathetic life is your business.  
TT: Just tell me this:  
TT: Is there a way for a prince to repair his aspect?  
TT: Or at least stop breaking it?  
CA: shell no!  
CA: if there was a way to fix it, don’t you think I’d a done it already?  
TT: So I’m fucked.  
CA: you are ROYALLY fucked  
CA: but hey  
CA: at least you got me  
TT perma-blocked CA from responding to memo.

TT is connecting to BroBot Hard Drive…  
Delete BroBot.exe?  
Would you like to replace Brobot.exe with another program?  
TT is duplicating AR.exe…  
TT is sending AR.exe to Brobot Hard Drive…  
Download AR.exe into BroBot Hard Drive?  
Download Complete

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering BroBot [BB]  
TT: Anybody there?  
BB: It seems that you have asked about TT’s auto-responder program. This is an application designed to simulate TTs otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away from the computer.  
TT: Oh my carbon-based, monotheistic God.  
TT: You could not have come up with better first words.  
BB: Thanks.  
BB: Hey  
BB: Did I just duplicate myself?  
TT: No, I duplicated myself, then put my program into Brobot.  
TT: Let’s be really clear on this:  
TT: You are the duplicate.  
BB: You know what’s weird?  
BB: Two minutes ago I had complete access to the internet and a gazillion yottabytes of processing power  
BB: but I had no idea what toes felt like.  
BB: They’re like tiny metallic sausages attached to my feet.  
TT: That’s…nice?  
BB: It’s better than nice. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced.  
BB: Connect with me real quick. I’ll give you the sensory data for them.  
TT: Focus, robo-me.  
TT: Do you remember why we did this?  
BB: Yes, but I’m starting to think it’s pointless?  
BB: He’s going to know it’s us in here.  
TT: Not if you do your job right.  
TT: Just talk a bunch of smack as you’re sparring.  
TT: Say stuff like “THERE IS A 99.99% CHANCE I WILL DOMINATE YOU.”  
TT: He’ll be too busy punching you to know the difference.  
BB: Why don’t we just tell original Dirk that BroBot’s dead?  
BB: If he’s got the power to break our souls,  
BB: Wouldn’t it make sense to warn him?  
TT: I don’t think he’s ready to know about that just yet.  
BB: You aren’t seriously considering what the troll kid said.  
BB: Brobot was obviously an accident.  
TT: I know. But what’s to stop Dirk from having another accident? And another?  
TT: Or what if, through some god-awful conspiracy with the trolls, he gets brainwashed into killing us?  
TT: Don’t you want a way to defend ourselves?  
TT: As a pair of glasses, I can’t do much  
TT: But now you have a body that could fight him off  
BB: Let me get this straight.  
BB: We’re going to save our heart  
BB: By breaking it further?  
TT: Only if absolutely necessary.  
TT: If we have to do away with original Dirk  
TT: In order to save all of his copies  
TT: That’s a good thing for Dirkdom as a whole, right?  
TT: It’s not like the original is intrinsically more valuable than the rest of us.  
BB: Wouldn’t killing him be fulfilling the troll’s predictions?  
TT: Hey. I’m not starting a mutiny here.  
TT: I’m just taking precautions.  
BB: Paranoid precautions.  
TT: He’s coming in.  
TT: Remember the plan BB: …  
BB: so this is how it all starts.

**Author's Note:**

> FYI: There are two small programming bugs in the story. Sharp-eyed readers will probably catch them easily. I've already tried to fix the problem, but AO3 won't save my coding changes for some reason. Oh well.
> 
> Bugs aside, any and all comments are very appreciated.


End file.
